My uncle Jimmy, James Forrester enlisted in the Essex Regiment as a Regular soldier on 11th Mar 1936 and was trained by Gallipoli Squad at Warley Barracks, Brentwood.
He signed on for 7 years full-time service and 5 years on Reserve. In April 1936 he paid a Life Membership Subscription for the Essex Regiment Association and on 28th June 1936 was confirmed in the Regimental Chapel, aged 18.
In January 1938 Jimmy was posted overseas to the 1st Battalion, Essex Regiment, initially to Egypt and Palestine then for over a year to Cyprus. He then returned to North Africa, firstly to Sudan then Egypt. In November 1941 the Battalion was involved in the epic struggle for Ed Duda during the successful break-out from Tobruk.
He was initially reported as missing then as a POW on 29th of November 1941, then again as missing at sea together with 9 other members of his unit, his death is shown in the Army Roll of Honour as presumed dead at sea whilst a POW on 9th Dec 1941 and he is commemorated on the Alamein Memorial.
My Father, Jonny, serving with the Royal Navy on the cruiser HMS Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, did not receive the news of his elder brothers death until July 1942, when he was told that he had been killed at Tobruk.
As I was curious as to the circumstances of Jimmy's death, I have undertaken further research, both using the internet and at the National Archives Kew.
On 8th Dec 1941 the Italian Motor Vessel Sebastiano Veniero had left Benghazi harbour carrying a large draft of 2100 POWs: UK, South African, New Zealander and Australian troops, all captured by the Germans in North Africa, with rations sufficient for the 36-hour dash across to Italy. The ship had been built in Amsterdam in 1939 under the name Jason or Jantzen, was requisitioned by the Italian Navy and renamed Sebastiano Veniero. In the middle of the next afternoon, just off Cape Methoni, 5 miles off Pilos on the south-west coast of the Greek Peloponnese, she was struck by a torpedo fired by the Royal Navy Grampus-class submarine HMS Porpoise. She was hit between the No.1 and No.2 hold on the starboard side, the force of the explosion hurled the heavy hatchway covers to mast height, the falling timbers killing dozens of men trying to escape from the hold. From the flooded No.1 hold only five men survived. The Italian hospital ship Arno appeared on the scene and according to one account, ploughed its way through the men struggling in the water and kept on sailing, its priority being the rescue of the crew of a German ship sunk nearby (another account says that the Arno rescued men from the Sebastiano Veniero and there is no record of another sinking).
Five hundred or more of the prisoners packed in the holds were killed.
As soon as they had recovered from the shock of the explosion, surviving POWs rushed to the decks up ropes or still usable ladders. The rugged coastline of Greece could be seen several miles away with heavy seas breaking on it, and lashed by a bitterly cold wind.
The Italian captain and most of the panic stricken crew, reportedly, had taken themselves off in two of the three lifeboats, the other having capsized in launching, and some of the POWs jumped overboard in an attempt to swim to the shore. Nine New Zealanders reached one of the boats, which eventually made it to a nearby uninhabited island where they spent the night, and they were taken over to the mainland the next day. Fifteen got away on a raft they had managed to launch, but more than half of these died of exposure.
Meanwhile a German naval engineer officer had taken control of the ship, explaining to those on board that the engines would still go and that there was a good chance of reaching safety. He ordered everybody aft in order to keep the weight off the damaged bow and organised rescue parties to bring up to the officers' quarters the injured from the lower decks.
Although the wind and sea were still strong, the ship was brought in stern first and beached at about 5 p.m. broadside on to an open piece of coast. A South African lance corporal, Bernard Friedlander of the 3rd Battalion, Transvaal Scottish Regiment, swam ashore with a rope, which took him 90 minutes, the rope was then used to haul a cable ashore, which was made fast on land. Nearly 1,600 survivors then used the cable to reach safety. In spite of the bitter cold many also now swam the remaining fifty yards to the shore, and when darkness fell many others made their way to safety along other ropes secured to the rocks.
The next day dawned fine, and those still on board came off in the remaining lifeboat or on stretchers slung to the ropes. A check made later showed that a little over two-thirds of the British and Commonwealth prisoners had survived, the remainder (including 44 New Zealanders and Jimmy) having perished either in the explosion or in the events which followed. One source gives different figures for the total number of prisoners killed: either 300 or 450 - 500. I have confirmed in the National Archives that Jimmy was among those killed.
Sebastiano Veniero remained stranded at Methoni, and on 15 December the British T-class submarine HMS Torbay sank her with a torpedo.
The German officer saw Friedlander's heroism on 9 December and recommended the lance corporal for a UK bravery award. In July 1945 Friedlander was awarded the George Medal. In 1947 King George VI toured South Africa, and at a ceremony in Johannesburg on 31 March personally decorated Friedlander with the medal.
British authorities tried to confirm the names of the Allied soldiers who were killed on the ship by writing to surviving POWs in German and Italian camps but with limited success. However, Jimmy is named, together with other members of 1st Essex Regt. in the National Archives File reference WO361/133.
Perhaps it is a consolation that Jonny did not know that his brother Jimmy had been killed by a British submarine, particularly as in his later life he worked on the maintenance of a later British submarine also named HMS Porpoise.
